the freedman was
regarded not indeed as a burgess, but as personally free in relation
to his former master and his heirs, and was accordingly looked upon
at first as a client, and in later times as a plebeian.(7)

The emancipation of a son encountered greater difficulties than
that of a slave; for while the relation of master to slave was
accidental and therefore capable of being dissolved at will, the
father could never cease to be father. Accordingly in later times
the son was obliged, in order to get free from the father, first
to enter into slavery and then to be set free out of this latter
state; but in the period now before us no emancipation of sons can
have as yet existed.

Clients and Foreigners

Such were the laws under which burgesses and clients lived in Rome.
Between these two classes, so far as we can see, there subsisted from
the beginning complete equality of private rights. The foreigner
on the other hand, if he had not submitted to a Roman patron and thus
lived as a client, was beyond the pale of the law both in person
and in property. Whatever the Roman burgess took from him was
as rightfully acquired as was the shellfish, belonging to nobody,
which was picked up by the sea-shore; but in the case of ground
lying beyond the Roman bounds, while the Roman burgess might take
practical possession, he could not be regarded as in a legal sense
its proprietor; for the individual burgess was not entitled to
advance the bounds of the community. The case was different in
war: whatever the soldier who was fighting in the ranks of the levy
gained, whether moveable or immoveable property, fell not to him,
but to the state, and accordingly here too it depended upon the
state whether it would advance or contract its bounds.

Exceptions from these general rules were created by special
state-treaties, which secured certain rights to the members of
foreign communities within the Roman state. In particular, the
perpetual league between Rome and Latium declared all contracts
between Romans and Latins to be valid in law, and at the same time
instituted in their case an accelerated civil process before sworn
"recoverers" (-reciperatores-). As, contrary to Roman usage,
which in other instances committed the decision to a single judge,
these always sat in plural number and that number uneven, they are
probably to be conceived as a court for the cognizance of commercial
dealings, composed of arbiters from both